Search Results for: the-collected-writings-of-michael-snow

Writing, for Michael Snow, is as much a form of “art-making” as the broad range of visual art activities for which he is renowned, including the “Walking Woman” series and the film Wavelength. Conversely, many of the texts included in this anthology are as significant visually as they are at the level of content — they are meant to be looked at as well as read. Situated somewhere between a repository of contemporary thought by one of our leading Canadian artists and a history book as it brings to light some important moments in the cultural life of Canada since the 1950s, these texts tell their own story, marking the passage of time, ideas and attitudes. The works included here, ranging from essays and interviews and record album cover notes to filmscripts and speeches (which, in Snow’s hands, often fall into the category of performance art), are not only “built for browsing,” they offer insights into both the professional and the private Snow. Together, they expand the context of Snow’s work and show the evolution of a great Canadian artist, beginning with his early attempts at defining art, to his emergence and recognition on the international art scene. This book is one of four books that are part of the Michael Snow Project. Initiated by the Art Gallery of Ontario and The Power Plant Gallery, the project also includes four exhibitions of his visual art and music.

Can visual art help redeem one’s sense of self, damaged by technological society? Michael Snow’s work is often described as self-referential, meaning that it “talks” about the relationships between its materials and images, largely ignoring relationships beyond the “frame.” However, since the work also encompasses the way in which the interior relationship of the work intersects with sight and how they, together, create the frame, the work also must include the people looking at it. This book explores how the visual art practice of Michael Snow asks the question Who? of the viewers as they interpret what lies before them. Much criticism of Snow objectively analyzes the material interrelationships in his work, ignoring viewer participation, and implicitly giving the artist control of the view. However, what if the “who” is addressed from the perspective of the viewer, who is looking across a gap created by concrete representation, time, place, experience and, perhaps, gender? How then can it remain objective? Following on writers such as Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Figuring Redemption questions the proposal that the contemporary sense of self is “fallen” as a result of modern technology, but can be redeemed in some part by certain kinds of visual art. Original in its positioning of interpretive and critical writing on the side of an embodied viewer, this book rejuvenates Snow criticism by going beyond discussions of materials and operation or of loss and distancing due to mediation. By alternating personal performance writing with objective analysis, the text participates in the destabilizing process of questioning self-recognition that Snow’s practice initiates.

Projecting forward in time from the processes of design and construction that are so often the focus of architectural discourse, Consuming Architecture examines the variety of ways in which buildings are consumed after they have been produced, focusing in particular on processes of occupation, appropriation and interpretation. Drawing on contributions by architects, historians, anthropologists, literary critics, artists, film-makers, photographers and journalists, it shows how the consumption of architecture is a dynamic and creative act that involves the creation and negotiation of meanings and values by different stakeholders and that can be expressed in different voices. In so doing, it challenges ideas of what constitutes architecture, architectural discourse and architectural education, how we understand and think about it, and who can claim ownership of it. Consuming Architecture is aimed at students in architectural education and will also be of interest to students and researchers from disciplines that deal with architecture in terms of consumption and material culture.

Flow combines cutting-edge scholarship with practitioner perspectives to address the concept of 'flow' and how it connects interiors, landscapes and buildings, expanding on traditional notions of architectural prominence. Contributors explore the transitional and intermediary relationships between inside/outside. Through a range of case studies, authors extend the notion of flow beyond the western industrialised world and embrace a wider geography while engaging with the specificity of climate and place. Accompanied by stunning colour illustration and photography, Flow brings together historical, theoretical and practice-based approaches to consider themes of nature, mobility, continuity and frames.

Conducting the first comprehensive study of films that do not move, Justin Remes challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), he shows how motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature. Analyzing four categories of static film--furniture films, designed to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which foreground the static display of letters and written words; and monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as their image--Remes maps the interrelations between movement, stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in time, he suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. Remes's discussion integrates the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll and will appeal to students of film theory, experimental cinema, intermedia studies, and aesthetics.

Includes a history of the Americas Society (formerly known as The Center for Inter-American Relations) with an emphasis on the visual arts program which comprises 4000 square feet of exhibition space and a series of programs open to the public at 680 Par

Besides being one of Canada's most celebrated visual artists, Michael Snow is one of the premier experimental filmmakers of his time. Working within the realm of the "avant-garde", his cinematic work has influenced filmmakers as diverse as Wim Wenders, Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Atom Egoyan and Martin Scorcese. Snow's "Wavelength" is one of the seminal works of cinema's avant-garde. Presence and Absence is certain to become the standard work on the films of Michael Snow. With contributions by film scholars, artists and curators, this generously illustrated volume is the most comprehensive study of Snow's films to date, and includes enlightening essays, anecdotal pieces, an annotated bibliography and filmography.

The extensive retrospective of Michael Snow's work, on exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario from March to June 1994 and touring Ontario galleries through 1995, will be a major Canadian cultural event. Published in conjunction with the exhibition, The Michael Snow Project celebrates the work of Snow's astonishing career as a painter, filmmaker, and sculptor. With contributions by Canada's leading art critics, this lavishly illustrated book covers all aspects of Snow's extraordinary diverse artistic expression and is the first comprehensive and accessible look at one of Canada's most important and internationally recognized artists. The second volume,Music/Sound, explores the many-faceted use of sound by Michael Snow--as a musician, on film soundtracks and in sound installations. The book includes a complete discography and is generously illustrated.

This book documents the most important exhibition of conceptual art ever undertaken, and surveys with decidedly international scope the development of idea-based art in the works of over 100 artists, from Australia, Asia, Latin America, Africa, Western and Eastern Europe, and North America. Included are scholarly essays which consider on a region-by-region basis the spread of conceptual art, as well as the "moment of rupture" when artists turned from object-based to idea-based art. Through both its text and its numerous reproductions, this book shows the degree to which the language of conceptual art is global, and its extensive look at non-Western artists redresses the relative invisibility of these places in most histories of conceptualism.